Ultra long YAK: hit DEL now! Re: [TheForge] Shortcut Sword? [LONGISH] even longer

[Andy Vida]

Kevin Donahoe wrote:
> 
> Folks start talking about the evils of tv

	Some of the effects of TV cannot be argued, and some of those
	are in fact harmful.  Would you argue that cyanide, taken
	orally, is not harmful?

> and protection from cheap labor
> and I see big brother getting bigger. 

	Big brother is huge and has been for a very long time.  I've
	read about all manner of conspiracies of the past many
	centuries.  Some would seem to be the products of minds with
	far too much time on their hands, and others pieced together
	from hard fact.  Who can say for certain which ones, if any, 
	are in fact real and which are off the mark?  I cannot, though 
	I have intuitions about some of them.  One thing I do feel
	confident in is that they in fact exist and operate in this
	world.  One need only consider the basic functioning of
	human beings, particularly those who covet power.  Here
	I mean real power and not superficial and vulgar forms that
	pass away with a generation.

	My point is that world markets are in fact being manipulated
	on a regular basis and have been for a long time.  They are not
	being manipulated to the benefit of John Q. Public, either.
	Therefore, being concerned about such activities is in fact in
	the interest of Joe Schmoe.  As for Big Brother... in your
	context we get into a question of whose evil is less onerous 
	to our lives?  Personally, I think it all stinks.  A system of
	diseased thinking and culture has been set up across the globe
	and it has ruined much of this world.  To what precise end I 
	cannot say, but one cannot examine the conditions we see today,
	observe its astonishing uniformity across cultures that have
	traditionally been highly disparate, and reasonably conclude
	that there is no intentional mechanism at work.  To so conclude
	would be either insane, disingenuous, of stupid beyond all
	forgiveness.

	Why would peoples across the globe who have lived in relative
	harmony with the world suddenly embrace a world view that not
	only encourages warfare against the environment, their neighbors
	and THEMSELVES, but demands it?  It tells me that something
	very sick is spreading like a plague across the face of creation.
	Elements of force are at work and it is as ugly as anything
	one can imagine in their most twisted and ravaged nightmares.

> That's my paranoia, trying to stave
> off such rationalizations when the Republicrats
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^

	You see?  You recognize it as well.  But who are they?
	Who pulls their strings?  Who stands behind the throne?
	It is somewhat useless to claim that such a view is the
	product of paranoid fantasy and that what we observe is the
	inevitable product of human nature.  I make this assertion
	based on the evidence that stares us in the face.  The
	single source of this mode of operation has been the West.
	Nowhere else in history do we see the same psychological
	profile with regard to the acquisition and maintenance of
	power.  I've studied the Japanese, the Mongols, Chinese,
	ancient Egyptians, Greece, Rome... all large and powerful 
	empires, none of which can compare in any manner to the
	mechanisms we see in place today and whose manifestations 
	originated in Europe about 1700 years ago and perhaps a bit 
	earlier.

> keep making new rules that
> decide for us, when people are capable of deciding for themselves. 

	People don't WANT to decide for themselves.  Why do you think
	we have representative government?  People that wish to govern
	themselves would not want representatives speaking and acting
	on their behalf.  That is the great lie about America, about
	what it is.  It is a huge lie.  America is not only not a free
	nation, but was never meant to be one.  I know this is pure
	heresy for most folks, but this is how I see it.

	The only free people I have ever encountered (in writing)
	have been those of so-called "primitive" tribal nations.
	Those people were free.  They came and went as they pleased,
	observing only a bare minimum set of "laws" (such as not
	murdering one another without just cause).  Anyone that
	didn't like it was free to leave at any time.  That is far
	closer to true individual liberty than anything any of us
	has ever known or probably ever will.

> The
> discussion seems to center around being self sufficient/independent. 

	Partly so, yes.  Something I will also remind everyone that
	none of us are and few of us could be.

> But
> the contradiction is an underlying theme of making more rules to fix
> somethign thats just a matter of choice. 

	Not on my end it hasn't been.  About ten years ago I engaged in
	an exercise that took me a couple of days to complete.  I wrote
	my own constitution under the assumption that it would replace
	the current US version.  It was not an easy task and remains
	unfinished to this day, but the central idea behind it is the
	insistence upon a small and unchangeable nucleus of laws, about
	three in all (and that isn't even complete due to the extreme
	difficulty of writing "good" law that cannot be circumvented by
	evil men).  My constitution eliminates nearly all government
	mechanisms and so greatly limits those that remain that there is
	virtually no way to abridge the freedoms of individuals except
	along a few very specific and narrowly defined lines.  Even that
	much law gives me the willies.  The conclusion I came to, part
	of the reason I ceased my work, is that there is no way to protect
	people from themselves.  No body of law will prevent evil men
	from doing evil.  We have a constitution that would , were we an
	honest and just people, serve the ends of liberty and prosperity
	beautifully.  What I observe in this nation today is nothing of
	that, and it is getting uglier and more ominous by the day.  We
	are not a just and good people.  This is not to say that there
	are not just and good people here, but a nation must be judged
	on the whole and not in its parts.  On the whole, the USA is,
	as a political creature, an utter betrayal of its own ideals.
	
	I suppose this could be simple inevitability at work, but I am
	loathe to buy the notion, as the only legitimate conclusion there
	is despair.

> Who wouldn't buy steel that's 50
> cents/lb less, don't curse the ------? for beating us at our own game,
> unless your willing to pay the difference. 

	I agree with you partly, but we are not being beaten at our own
	game, really.  People in Mumbojumboland are able and willing to
	live on $.50/day.  Americans cannot.  This is an inherent inequity.

> I don't even see how someone
> taking heroin recreationally is at all criminal any more so than someone
> being a couch potato,

	I completely agree with you.

> as long as they perform some service to society and
> pay their own way. 

	"Society", like "the state" doesn't exist.  It is an artificial
	mental construct designed to pummel people into doing another's
	bidding.  Don't fall for it because it is complete bullshit.
	I owe "society" NOTHING.  Nor do you, or anyone else.  This does
	not mean there is no value in doing things for the larger
	community, but one OWES them nothing.  Obligations of this sort
	are a horrible poison that destroys cultures.  History is littered
	with examples of how this works.  Coercion is the greatest poison
	that humanity has ever dredged up from the bowels of its+- most
	twisted heart.  It is the only evil that need be stamped out.
	Excise this from the hearts and minds of men and nearly all calamity
	between them and their nations would abate.  I won't hold my breath 
	on this.

> Hell, we even forget the value of a bad example in our
> politically correct times.

	You are dead on the money!  Memories are short.  Always have
	been, probably always will be.  People, like lions and tigers,
	are lazy beasts.  They move mainly when they have to.
> 
> Have a sister that romanticizes the european socialist model that
> criminalizes working over 32-+ hours a week, while she works 50-60 a week
> here.  Have no idea what the crime would be there.  To quote/paraphrase
> Wendell Berry, 'we despise what we romanticize.'

	Europe is a lost shit hole.  So is America, only a little less so
	in some respects, which still makes it a better place to hang.
> 
> The movie from the mid '70s "The Groove Tube" stands as my vital reference
> to TV, I'll have to look at Jerry Mander's arguments some day.  But I don't
> think society is any better or worse off for tv. 

	Here I must respectfully disagree.  I believe it is far worse off.
	The manipulative mechanisms inherent in television are far more
	powerful than anything that has preexisted it.  Not radio, not brute
	force, not drugs, nor religion can hold a candle to the long-term
	manipulation value of TV.  That is saying a LOT and I stand by it.

> The failure of the
> progressive argument is that human nature won't change, we're not
> perfectable.

	Human nature hasn't changed an iota in all of its written
	history.  What makes you think it will change at some time
	down the road?  Genetic engineering?  That's a tiger's tail
	I firmly believe is better left un-pulled, not that that
	will stop "them".

> Tv may be another filter to seperate the wheat from the chaff,
> like drugs, alcohol, sex, or any variety of things that can be indulged in,
> or not, a little or a lot depending on the individual choice.

	This may or may not be so in theory, but in reality people
	are addicted to TV as surely as if they injected it into
	their veins like heroin.  I've known people that become
	personally ornery of they don't get their fix.  I mean this
	very literally.
> 
> I agree we're judged by our actions, not good intentions, or critical
> thinking.  But I have a hard time believing we're all subject to the Great
> Compromise. 

	We are if we behave in a manner consistent with it.  I am largely
	guilty of this as well, so fie on me too.

> I guess after a brief stint in college ROTC I saw how hard it
> was to get 10-50 people that all agreed, in principal, to actually do the
> same thing... I knew there weren't 12 bearded old men, masons, or
> rothchilds, manipulating humanity.

	Here I must also disagree.  There are men of discipline and
	knowledge in this world.  A few examples: ultra orthodox Jews
	are a prime example of uniformity of vision and social cohesion.
	The Jesuits are another example.  Note that these are both
	religious orders.  Power, as religion, can (and I believe has)
	made a clear path most apparent to it's adept adherents.  Raise 
	a child with the right world view and your assertion of not 
	being able to get 10 people to agree on anything becomes 
	demonstrably false.  Such inability is not a matter of inherent 
	nature, but of training.  Humans can be trained to so ANYTHING.  
	One example would be the Bushi (samurai).  Getting a 12 year 
	old samurai boy to hack another living human being into pieces 
	with a katana would have taken very little encouragement.  The 
	psychological effects would have been positive.  Why?  Because 
	of the world view with which they were raised.

	A more accessible example for Americans would perhaps be kids
	and hunting.  Today, many kids in the USA would find it very
	difficult to go out and hunt.  Is it due to their nature?  No.
	It is due to their mental training.  Other kids are raised
	with a squirrel gun and shoot dinner on a regular basis, feeling
	no sorrow for the fate of their quarry.  Is one "right" and the
	other "wrong"?  I doubt it.  I can go and shoot to eat.  I don't
	like it because of the way I was raised.  The one thing I cannot
	abide is the suffering of prey.  Were I to savagely wound a
	deer, for example, and cause it prolonged agony, I think that
	would come as close to killing me as anything could.  I have
	known others who are not as affected by such things.  Nature 
	is involved only in the sense that our natures allow us to be
	formed according to very broad spectrum of possibilities.

	Imagine, for argument's sake, that in fact such a body of
	men endowed with world affecting power exists.  What assumption
	do you think they would want to see you living under?  That
	people are too stupid to get anything significant done or that
	they can be trained up to perform incredible feats?
> 
> But I do recall hearing about TV signals that are years old showing up as
> weak signals on sets, supposedly bounced off of planets or atmoshphere to
> return to earth... and wondered about the effect of all that radiation
> bouncing through us, with just the right implant, who'd need
> TV?!?!?dododododododo (that's the 'Twilight Zone' theme, there, adjust my
> aluminum foil hat...)
> 
> Kevin
> 
> PS Andy, come Ricmond, I'd love to buy you a beer, or cup of coffee, but I'm
> afraid we'd have to both talk at the same time to get out by closing time ;)
> and never mind if Bob Rackers or Ralph Sproul were along!!!!  the
> beer/coffee would be running out our nose in no time, fer kicks'n'giggles,
> that is, and all we could do is go with it.

	Richmond VA?  In a heartbeat, pal.  Bob Rackers and Ralph?
	Wow, that would be pretty cool.